Kidnapping survivor Abby Hernandez reveals how she stayed alive in captivity and never lost hope

Abby Hernandez had been simply 14 yrs . old when she vanished with out a trace while walking home from her college in North Conway, New Hampshire, on Oct. 9, 2013.

For nine months, Abby’s disappearance left her family, investigators additionally the grouped community mystified. The seek out the teenager was one of many biggest in the state’s history. Rumors and theories percolated through the newest that is northern Hampshire about what might have happened to your teenager, who had simply begun her freshman 12 months at Kennett senior high school.

It absolutely was not likely that anyone could have thought the reality of what had really occurred to Abby — the teenager was hidden and kidnapped away simply 30 kilometers north of Conway. There, her captor held her prisoner in a storage space container, where she endured constant attack that is intimate torture.

Within an interview that is exclusive ABC News’ “20/20,” Abby spoke for the first time about her experience and what her captor forced her to endure.

Through the brief minute she noticed she was being abducted, Abby said that her survival instincts, fueled by adrenaline, kicked in. Myself, ‘Okay, i eventually got to make use of this person.“ I remember thinking to’ I said [to him], because of this‘ I don’t judge you. Me go, I won’t inform anybody about it,’” Abby recalled in the event that you allow.

But her efforts that are initial negotiate along with her abductor were unsuccessful, and she was driven to his property where she invested much of the following nine months in the container.

Even while she suffered daily abuse, Abby kept hope alive by praying for the strength to endure her ordeal.

I never ever said ‘amen’ in my head“ I remember. We never ever wished to end my prayers me,” Abby said because i did not want Jesus to leave. “I just actually wished to live.”

A proven way that Abby kept herself alive was by thinking strategically and establishing a relationship along with her captor.

“I told him, ‘Look, you do not seem like somebody who is bad. Like, everybody makes mistakes… me go, I won’t inform anyone concerning this. in the event that you let’ I really always kinda placed it– you understand, ‘This strategy is often here.’”

Abby said her captor slowly became more trusting of her, also enlisting her to simply help him create cash that is fake his home, she said. “Part of how I gained their trust, i assume, washe wished to do,” she said… we went along side whatever.

Clinical psychologist Rebecca Bailey praised Abby’s resourcefulness.“It’s amazing that she had been strategizing. It really is, once again, very remarkable and, again, speaks of her capacity to get free from her terror problem-solve and state.”

The strategy would repay for Abby in a manner that is vital her captor began providing her books to see, and something time, she discovered her captor’s name written in a cookbook he’d given her. “I said, ‘Who’s Nate Kibby?’… In which he simply kind of breathed in which he said ‘How do you understand my title?’”

Ultimately, in 2014, Kibby released her out of fear that police had been going to check out their house as a result of a counterfeiting research july. Lauren Munday, who stated she had met Kibby on line, stated she was given by him three $50 bills to simply help buy a accommodation. It turned out to be fake when she utilized one of many bills at an area Walmart. She called Kibby and told him he’d been written by her as much as authorities.

“So, I told him, ‘Whatever you’re ——- making in your basement that is damn better clean it right now, since they are coming for your a–,” Munday told “20/20.”

Kibby made Abby promise to not expose their identification to anybody.